APRA levy actually forecast down for 2025-26

At the same time that Treasury is reviewing the funding arrangements for the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort it has outlined the structure of the so-called APRA levy imposed on superannuation funds and has revealed a 3.9% cost decrease.

Treasury has thrown up the consultation process around the Financial Institutions Supervisory Levies for 2025-26 and while the ASIC levy has gone up together with a likely increase in the cost of the CSLR, the story is different for the banks, insurers and superannuation funds.

In fact, the APRA levy covers funding of not just APRA activities related to financial services but also the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) and, to some degree Treasury.

The bottom line, however, is that the proposed levy for 2025-26 is going down because of reduced needs on the part of APRA and the ATO.

According to the Treasury documentation, the total funding required under the levies in 2025–26, for all relevant Commonwealth agencies, is $282.6 million. This is a $11.4 million (3.9 per cent) reduction from the 2024–25 requirement.

“The reduction is largely attributable to a $3.1 million reduction in APRA’s levies and a $8.4 million reduction in the ATO component,” the document said.

“The budgeted total cost for APRA for 2025–26 is $266.8 million, a $2.9 million (1.1 per cent) reduction from the 2024–25 budget. The reduction is largely due to the decrease in funding from earlier budget measures, partially offset by the effects of wage cost index movements. Other components of the funding requirements include:

• a further $1.0 million to provide for future enforcement costs
• removal of $21.7 million of non-levy income (refer to Table 3)
• refund of $2.2 million of prior year over-collected levies from industry
• a new budget measure of $2.0 million on superannuation in retirement reporting framework
• removal of the cost increase of $2.9 million arising from the introduction of AASB-16 Leases

APRA’s underlying net levies funding requirement for 2025–26 is $243.0 million, a reduction of $3.1 million (1.3 per cent) to the funding requirement for 2024–25.”

The bottom line is that  the banks and life insurers are being estimated to pay less in terms of the APRA levy fo 2025-26 while general insurers will pay the same as the previous year while superannuation funds will pay marginally more.